Describing Trends in Virginia\u27s Dentist and Dental Hygienist Workforce: Challenges and Opportunities

Purpose: Regular assessment of the dental workforce is essential to improve the population\u27s oral health. This analysis aimed to understand the trends in the distribution of dentists and dental hygienists (DHs) in Virginia. Methods: Annual survey data (2013-2022) of dentists and DHs from the Virginia Department of Health Professions Healthcare Workforce Data Center was used to examine the trends in provider distribution by age, gender, race/ethnicity, and geography across Virginia. Results: In 2022, there were 5,720 dentists and 5,290 DH licensees in Virginia. In the dentist workforce, there was a high representation of those aged ≥60 years (23%), males (58%), and Whites (59%). On the other hand, the DH workforce has been predominantly females (98%) and Whites (76%), and the age groups were more evenly distributed. Black dentists and DH were highly underrepresented; compared to the 19% Black population in Virginia, only 6% and 5.2% of dentists and DH workforce were Black, respectively. Over time, several counties have seen a decline in FTEs in dentists compared to DHs. In 2022, 9 counties lacked a dentist/DH or both, and 79 counties had lower dentist and DH FTEs than the state average (0.5 FTE for dentists and 0.4 FTE for DH). Discussion: Virginia\u27s dentist and DH workforce have seen some diversification in the past decade, but significant work needs to be done to gain diversity and equity. Conclusion and recommendations: The development of targeted programs and policies to improve professional entry, growth, and retention is necessary to maintain a sustainable, diverse, and representative workforce and address the oral health needs of Virginians

Knowledge of obstetric danger signs amongst women of reproductive age in paths2 Zaria cluster, Kaduna Nigeria

Background: The Partnership for Transforming Health Systems 2 (PATHS2) in Nigeria is implementing selected Behavior Change Communication (BCC) models to increase the knowledge of obstetric danger signs amongst women of reproductive age in Kaduna, Nigeria. The objective of this survey was to establish baseline proportions for knowledge of at least four dangersigns of pregnancy, delivery and postpartum period respectively amongst women age 15 - 49, residing within 25 selected communities in Zaria.Method: A cross-sectional survey was carried out amongst the eligible women within the communities. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used for interview.Results: 617 (94.5% response) eligible women participated in the study. Only 113 (18.31%) knew at least four danger signs during pregnancy. 61 (9.89%) knew at least four danger signs that can occur during labor and delivery and only 57 (9.24%) knew at least four danger signs that can  occur during the postpartum period.Conclusion: A high proportion of the respondents are unaware of obstetric danger signs. It is recommended that radio broadcast be used as part of efforts towards increasing the proportion of women with knowledge of four or more obstetric danger signs in the study population.Keywords: Danger Signs, obstetric, pregnancy, labor and delivery, postpartum

Healthcare Professionals’ Retirement Intentions: The Roles of Financial and Work Factors

Delayed retirement has been utilized to provide short-term solution to the healthcare workforce demand-supply gap arising from increased retirement and healthcare needs by aging population. To adequately design an effective financial therapy and retirement delaying program, a knowledge of key factors affecting retirement intentions is critical. This study examines the influences of financial and work-related factors on retirement intentions among a sample of 21,860 healthcare professionals between 50 to 65 years old. Using data from the Virginia’s 2016 Dentist, Licensed Practical Nurse, Registered Nurse, Physician, and Pharmacist Surveys, multinomial logistic regressions were used to identify key factors associated with retirement intentions. Study findings showed that having lower income, education debt, and higher job satisfaction, among other factors, were associated with delayed retirement intentions. Incorporating this finding will be key in the creation of successful retirement delaying programs and ultimately in the reduction of the healthcare workforce demand-supply gap

Enterococcus sp. contamination surveillance in different levels of healthcare in eThekwini District, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) South Africa.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) have been identified as long-standing setbacks affecting hospitals' quality of health care. While one of the major challenges related to HAIs is controlling cross-transmission, the role and significance of the inanimate hospital environment chain of transmission are yet to be unequivocally elucidated. Therefore, this study investigated the functional profile and diverseness of bacteria from various inanimate environmental sources, from two different wards in public hospitals at various healthcare levels in eThekwini District, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. True to the study focus on investigating the dissemination of bacteria from equipment within the hospital, the study further used Enterococcus as well-known HAI as target bacteria and described the molecular and genomic profiles of this specie isolated from the hospital environments. Samples were collected for a period of three months (September – November 2017) from the four levels of healthcare in eThekwini district, KwaZulu-Natal. The intensive care unit and peadiatic ward were employed in this study. An overall of 620 swabs were collected from areas frequently touched by healthcare workers (HCWs) and patients. These sites include the occupied bed linen, unoccupied bed linen, drip stands, patient files, ward phones, ventilators, nurses' tables, blood pressure apparatus, sinks, linen room door handle and mops. Swabs were placed in Amies transport medium and transported in a cooler box to the laboratory facility to be processed within four hours. The collected swabs (n=620) were pooled and incubated in tryptone soya broth containing 6.5% NaCl at 36.5oC for 24 hrs and subsequently plated on enterococci chromogenic media. The microbial diversity and functional profiles from the sites were identified using 16S rRNA metagenomics. Positive colonies were sub-cultured on bile esculin azide agar, and screened using standard microbiological methods, including haemolytic, oxidase and catalase, and API. Identifications were confirmed with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with the added genus-specific tuf-gene and species-specific sodA-gene. Antibiotic resistance patterns in the Enterococcus spp. isolates were determined by the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method against 14 antibiotics as recommended by the Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI) guidelines. Thirty-seven samples from E. faecalis showed intermediate Resistance to vancomycin and were further analyzed using molecular tools viz. whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and bioinformatics analyses. This enabled determining the resistome, mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and clonal lineages circulating across the sites, wards, and hospitals. Metagenomics identified a total of 288 species, 190 genera, 105 families, 50 orders, 29 classes and 11 phyla from the samples analyzed. The dominant functional metabolic pathways implicated in causing human infection discovered were the signal transduction mechanisms, citrate cycle (TCA), transcription-factor bisphenol degradation, tyrosine metabolism. A total of 295 Enterococcus spp. isolates were recovered from the hospitals` environmental sites, 83% (n=245) were identified as Enterococcus faecium, 13% (n=38) as Enterococcus faecalis, 2% (n=6) Enterococcus gallinarum and another 2% (n=6) Enterococcus casseliflavus. Notably, the pediatric wards had the highest isolation rate compared to ICU, 64% and 36%, respectively. Overall, the sites with the highest isolation rate were occupied beds and mops (to clean ward floors) with 14.9% (n=44) each. The tertiary hospital were the most affected. The most prominent MDR antibiogram for E. faecium was CIP-RIF-NIT-TET-ERY and for WGS analysis of the E. faecalis samples confirmed that the tet(M) and erm(C) genes were the prevalent antibiotic resistance genes found in hospitals. The isolates harboured mobile genetic elements consisting of plasmids (n =11) and prophages (n=14), predominantly clonally specific. The 37 isolates analyzed consisted of 15 clonal lineages with six major sequence types (ST). Phylogenomic analysis showed that major lineages were mostly conserved within specific hospital environments. This study highlighted the inanimate hospital environment as a possible source of opportunistic nosocomial pathogens using Enterococcus as an illustrative example and emphasized the urgent necessity to optimize infection prevention and control measures to intercept/moderate the spread of bacteria in the hospital environments

Numerical investigation of a packed bed thermal energy storage system for solar cooking using encapsulated phase change material

Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.A numerical model for a packed bed thermal energy storage (TES) system using phase change material (PCM) is presented. The storage system is to be utilized for a solar cooking application. Sunflower Oil is the heat transfer fluid (HTF) during charging cycles. The packed bed TES consists of spherical capsules filled with erythritol, as the phase change material. The model uses dual-phase mathematical heat transfer equations while the phase change phenomena inside the PCM capsules is analyzed by using the effective heat capacity method. Results from the model are validated with experimental results from literature. Numerical and experimental results are reasonably comparable. The effects of inlet temperature and the flow rate of the HTF on the temperature profiles of the packed bed are presented.dc201

A Content Analysis on Publications Written on (E-Government and M-Government) from 2000 to 2021

The ICT (Internet Communication Technology), with the assistance of Web 2.0 tools, made a revolutionary impact on organizational performances, including the governmental ones. The Electronic Government or (E-Government) is a modern approach that contributes positively to the governmental organization's performances; it leads to a structural reforms and creates an innovative atmosphere in the flow of information. The Mobile Government or (M-Government) created by the technology innovators to add better efficiency to the governmental organizations works for saving time and efforts. Between 2000 and 2021, this study looked at publications that supported E-Government and M-Government that were published on the Scopus website or contributed to the Scopus database.  </p

Effects of nematic fluctuations on the elastic properties of iron arsenide superconductors

We demonstrate that the changes in the elastic properties of the FeAs systems, as seen in our resonant ultrasound spectroscopy data, can be naturally understood in terms of fluctuations of emerging nematic degrees of freedom. Both the softening of the lattice in the normal, tetragonal phase as well as its hardening in the superconducting phase are consistently described by our model. Our results confirm the view that structural order is induced by magnetic fluctuations.Comment: revised version with changed title accepted for publication in PR

Why pinning by surface irregularities can explain the peak effect in transport properties and neutron diffraction results in NbSe2 and Bi-2212 crystals?

The existence of a peak effect in transport properties (a maximum of the critical current as function of magnetic field) is a well-known but still intriguing feature of type II superconductors such as NbSe2 and Bi-2212. Using a model of pinning by surface irregularities in anisotropic superconductors, we have developed a calculation of the critical current which allows estimating quantitatively the critical current in both the high critical current phase and in the low critical current phase. The only adjustable parameter of this model is the angle of the vortices at the surface. The agreement between the measurements and the model is really very impressive. In this framework, the anomalous dynamical properties close to the peak effect is due to co-existence of two different vortex states with different critical currents. Recent neutron diffraction data in NbSe2 crystals in presence of transport current support this point of view

Profit Analysis of Fish Farming Enterprises in Ikenne Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria

Understanding the role of fish culture enterprises in our economy is critical for designing agricultural policies to increase productivity and enhance economic growth and to reduce poverty. The research investigated profit analysis of culture fish enterprises in Ikenne Local Area of Ogun State, Nigeria. This was achieved through random selection of 100 respondents. The method of analysis used was descriptive analysis to determine the socio economic characteristics of the fish farmers; budgetary analysis and profitability ratios was applied to examine profit level of the fish farmers. The results showed that 46% were men and 54% were women. Majority of the respondents (52%) were married and 48% were in the single category. It also revealed that farmers had at least primary education. 62% of the respondents had about less than 5 years experiences in the business, majority of farmers started their business with their own personal savings. The budgetary analysis shows that the gross margin of N50, 153,780 (125,384.45. Dollars) of the farmers and a net farm income of N49, 632, 580 (124,081.45. Dollars) of the respondents, which indicates that fish farming is profitable to the farmers in the study area. It was concluded that the venture is profitable to farmers, and it was recommended that young people mostly male should be encouraged to practice fish farming, and also involve in carrying out research on fish farming as this may help in solving the problem of food security and food sufficiency